


Hero, Friend, Girlfriend, Teammate

by Iritvea



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: F/F, Fandom Trumps Hate, Major Character Injury, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 20:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15104717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iritvea/pseuds/Iritvea
Summary: For milleniumrex, as part of Fandom Trumps Hate 2018. Raven and Starfire have been dating for a few months when Raven incurs a C-5 spinal fracture. She wakes in the hospital and must adapt to life post-injury and what this means for her and the team.





	Hero, Friend, Girlfriend, Teammate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milleniumrex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milleniumrex/gifts).



> Hello! This was written for milleniumrex as a gift for participating in the Fandom Trumps Hate 2018. Thank you for your generous donation and I really hope this is what you had in mind!

Fire swirled around at the outsides of Raven’s vision, dancing around and enveloping her forcefield as she pushed her way through the burning building. It took substantial effort for her to maintain the forcefield amidst the heat and large chunks of falling debris which would occasionally fall on it, jarring her concentration, but she remained focused on her goal.

She could hear screaming and crying getting louder as she neared the back bedroom where she had originally sent her soul self. She wanted to call out to the two frightened children that they would be all-right, but she was sure they wouldn’t be able to hear her over the roaring and crackling of the flames. Instead, as the bedroom door neared, she took a deep breath and enveloped herself in energy, phasing out her physical form so she could pass through the solid core door.

When she next opened her eyes, she hovered above the smoke-filled and singed remains of a nursery, where two small children – a young boy and his toddler sibling, she guessed—sat huddled in the corner, as far as they could get from the door. Raven felt a deep pang of sympathy seconds before the fear from both the children washed over her, nearly overwhelming her empathetic senses.

“Raven, have you found them?” Robin called over the earpiece she wore.

“They’re here,” Raven quickly responded, realizing as the kids followed her voice with their eyes that she would appear as a giant, dark-energy silhouette of herself. She allowed the energy to dissipate until she could feel her physical body rematerialize in the air. She threw a hand up to pull her hood back, so that the children could see her face.

“Kids, it’s ok, I’m here to help…” she tried, inching through the air towards them. Even with a couple of years occasionally caring for Timmy, Teether, and Melvin under her belt, she was still apprehensive about the way children reacted to her. However, these children seemed, perhaps understandably, not to care about that, as the older one quickly stood and hoisted the toddler into her arms as soon as it was feasibly possible to do so. He then reached out with pleading eyes to take her hand himself and she pulled him up and braced him against the opposite hip as she hovered in midair.

“Hang on, Raven called to the children now at her sides, raising her voice to speak over the noise as the bedroom door finally caught fire and started to burn. She curled in on herself slightly, tapping into the energy inside her, and allowing it to spread outward. With her soul self enveloping both her and the children, she rose and barreled at the exterior wall, dimly aware of the ceiling collapsing behind her as soon she and her present charges had just managed to clear the building.

Hovering in the air, Raven spared a glance over her shoulder at the burning apartment. She winced inwardly as the corner of the apartment building – containing the room they’d just escaped from – let out a hiss and exuded a fireball from each of the windows. Even Raven, who was used to this type of thing, being one of Jump City’s heroes, looked at this and swallowed.

“Dude! That was close!”

Raven turned back around, and sighted Beast Boy, seated a little too casually for Raven’s liking on the hood of the T-Car. Among her four teammates on the ground, he was the only one who didn’t look like he’d been holding his breath with worry seconds before. Raven’s gaze flew immediately to Starfire, rolling over Robin and a cheering Cyborg on the way to settle on her girlfriend.

The word, applied to Starfire, still set Raven’s heart fluttering. She’d never thought of herself as being able to be in a relationship prior to her father’s appearance, but as she looked into Starfire’s eyes, especially at times like this, she was glad for the growth she’d had, which had allowed her to say ‘yes’ four months ago, when Starfire had asked her if she wanted to use the term to define their relationship.

As if drawn in by a magnet, Raven floated in closer to Starfire, realizing how close she was almost late enough to crash into her. She righted herself, shifting the young child on her hip, and landed deftly in front of the other Titans.

Starfire clasped her hands together, eyes brightening as she spoke. “Girlfriend Raven!” she exclaimed, “We were worried you would not make it in time…”

Raven felt a warm smirk creep across her face, both in response to Starfire’s concern, and her use of ‘girlfriend,’ which starting this week, she’d taken to using in place of ‘friend.’

“You don’t have to worry about me, Starfire,” she carefully replied, crouching slightly to let the bigger of the two siblings slide off her hip and stand on the pavement.

“I will _always_ worry about you,” Starfire answered empathetically.

“I.. hate to interrupt,” came Robin’s voice from the side, as their team leader approached where the girls stood, “But I’d better get the kids over to the EMTs.”

He held out his arms for the toddler, which Raven gladly traded for the freedom of her other hip, and the older brother sidled up to stand next to him.

“Nice work, by the way, Raven,” Robin pronounced with a degree of warmth that faded slightly, but not altogether, as he turned to walk away, “I’ll leave you two alone.”

An uncomfortable silence sank in to the space around Starfire and Raven for a moment after Robin departed.

“He is… accepting it,” Starfire finally said, breaking the silence.

“He should,” countered Raven.

Starfire’s expression melted into a sad smile, “I know, and truthfully, he has been supportive, but initially… it hurt to see him so sad.”

Raven couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t probably have been too harsh given Starfire’s last statement, so she simply nodded.

“But make no mistake,” said Starfire firmly, “I am very glad to be with you.”

She held out her hand for Raven to take, which she did, and they walked arm-in-arm back to the T-Car, where Cyborg and Beast Boy had already climbed in.

Beast Boy, boredly hanging halfway out the backseat window, arched an eyebrow at them before yelling to Cyborg, “Hey Cy! If I turn into something smaller can I sit up front with you and Robin? Y’know, give the lovebirds some room?”

Raven flushed and became momentarily more aware of her arm interlocked with Starfire’s.

“Uh-uh BB, there’s only two seatbelts up here.”

“But…”

“And Robin and I don’t want feathers, fur, or chipmunk smell up here either.”  

Beast Boy half-glared at the front seat before shrinking down into his seat with an exasperated whine.

“Dude, you could’ve just said ‘no.’”

The next day, Raven sat with her legs crossed on her bed, with an old tome cracked over her left knee, and Starfire’s head resting on her right. As she poured over her latest favorite story, she was dimly aware of Starfire sighing and every so often peering up at her, mostly because she could feel the tickling sensation as Starfire’s hair moved to a different spot each time. She knew it was hard for Starfire to sit in silence, but that she did so knowing how important quiet and concentration was to Raven. It was a gesture Raven appreciated, and one she tried to find ways to reciprocate as often as she could.

“Girlfriend Raven, I do not wish to rush, but are you almost done with your chapter?” Starfire finally blurted out, disrupting the image of the book’s events which had been forming in Raven’s mind. She blinked a few times, allowing her eyes to adjust to the room from staring at the page. Her brow furrowed.

“What time is it?” she murmured.

Starfire practically leapt up to answer, “It is nine-thirty-six in the morning! We should be getting ready for the beach, yes?”

Raven’s chest tightened.

“Oh yeah…” she grumbled.

Starfire cocked her head to the side and leaned into Raven’s field of vision.

“Girlfriend Raven, I know you do not like the beach very much, but we all do enjoy your company.”

Raven said nothing.

“Especially me,” finished Starfire, leaning further into Raven’s field of view, into her face.

It took a second for Raven to realize that Starfire’s lips were pursed. She flushed, but smiling on the inside, leaned forward slightly to meet Starfire for the kiss. Starfire’s lips were like most everything else about her –gentle, and warm. Raven shivered as Starfire’s fingertips ghosted over the back of her hand and up her forearms. She turned her head to the side so as not to bump noses as they drew in closer together. She could feel Starfire’s mouth part open slightly and was debating whether or not to mirror her when there was a loud banging at her bedroom door.

Raven and Starfire both jumped and separated, with the former turning to glare at the door as if it by itself had interrupted. As she somewhat expected, Beast Boy’s excited shouts came from the other side, barely muffled even by the steel.

“Dudes! The T-Car’s packed, the sun is shining, and Cy says move it or lose it!”

This was followed by the rapid pounding of feet on the hall carpet, which told Raven that Beast Boy had taken off for the garage. She stopped glaring daggers at the door and turned back to Starfire, to be startled slightly when her girlfriend reached out and cupped her face in her hands.

“I will go get changed in my room,” she announced. “Please consider wearing a suit of bathing so you can swim with us this time?”

“I will, Starfire…”

“Because the water is so nice now and….”

“I said I will, Starfire,” Raven gently repeated.

Starfire gasped, beamed at Raven, and after bestowing a quick peck to the right of Raven’s chakra gemstone, leapt off the bed and flew out of the room.

The ride to the beach was largely uneventful. Raven and Starfire rode in the backseat with Beast Boy, who mostly kept alternating between turning into a dog and sticking his head out the window, and talking nonstop about all the things he planned to do at the beach. After another mini-adventure of trying to find a parking space, and a mini-debate between Cyborg, Raven, and Robin about whether the one they ended up parking in was actually a real parking space, they made for the pier and down to the beach.

The fact that it was a nice day, weather-wise, meant that what looked like half of Jump City had turned out to this particular beach. Raven bristled slightly, watching the happy and boisterous, brightly-dressed crowds roam the landscape of sand before her.

“I think I’ll sit and read,” she murmured.

Beast Boy, to her left, immediately broke into a high-pitched whine, “Dude! You do that _every_ time—try to live a little!”

Starfire, to her right, gently cleared her throat, “Girlfriend Raven, you promised me you would swim some of the time. It is the reason you wore your new suit of bathing.”

Raven frowned slightly and looked down at the black nylon one-piece clinging to her torso. She flushed a little, feeling rather exposed and vulnerable in what was, for her, a relatively revealing suit, even though the most skin showing was in the back, where she could feel the ocean breeze rolling across her shoulders and most of the way to her spine.

“Dude! You gotta join us!” Beast Boy chimed in.

“Yeah, come on, Raven!” Cyborg seconded.

“Please? Girlfriend Raven? It would make me very…”

“I’ll do it,” Raven sighed.

“Really?” Starfire cried out excitedly.

“...for a few minutes,” Raven appended, somewhat surprised to find that her teammates, and girlfriend, didn’t look any less thrilled. 

They set up umbrellas and chairs in a small, clear area a handful of feet from the water line. Beast Boy tore off into the surf as soon as his arms were emptied, and Starfire followed suit shortly behind him—drifting over the waves, giggling and beckoning Raven to join with a wave of her arm. Raven’s enthusiasm for the jaunt didn’t match the other two, but she nevertheless steadily picked her way into the surf behind them, feeling the water rush over her – at first cold, then warm – until she was fully acclimated, and the water came to just under her shoulder blades.

Starfire and Beast Boy quickly got into a splashing war, each finding unique ways to use their powers to soak the other. Raven, for the most part, only watched, until the pivotal point when Beast Boy turned into an Orca and brought his tail down on the surface of the water, realizing too late that the spray from that splash would hit Raven as well. He came to the surface with a horrified expression on his face, sputtering apologies as Raven scraped soaked, stringy bangs out of her eyes, only for his jaw to drop when Raven dawned a mischevious grin and used her powers to conjure a mini-cyclone in front of him that sprayed him about five times in the face before finally dissipating.

At that point, the war was on.

Some time later, Raven, Starfire, and Beast Boy emerged from the surf and collapsed on the blankets and chairs, partially from the weight of the water in their clothes and partially from exertion. After a substantial lunch of hamburgers and tofu-dogs was split amongst the five Titans, Robin proposed a game of beach volleyball to help them work off the food.

“Glorious idea, Robin!” Starfire exclaimed. “Come on, Raven!”

Raven groaned slightly as she was pulled to a clearing by the shore. About a half-hour later, the two teams were locked in a stalemate, and Beast Boy and Starfire were busy trash-talking.

Presently, she stood with the waterline lapping at her right foot as she waited for Beast Boy to send the frisbee back their direction. 

“Heads up, Dudes!” Beast Boy called as he served the ball over the net. Raven watched as it arced over the net, shut her eyes as it briefly eclipsed the sun, and then reopened them to see it barreling down towards a spot in the encroaching surf. She put on a burst of speed and threw her hands out in front of her, preparing to bump the ball before it could land. A final dive for the ball got her where she needed to be to grab it, only seconds before the momentum carried her forward, under the water, sliding through the wet sand underneath and then into something hard.

CRACK.

Raven opened her eyes to the realization that she couldn’t move. She could only see the sky above her and water cover her vision as her head bobbed below the water and then resurfaced. Her ears were under the water, so she wasn’t able to hear beyond a muffled set of screams and some rushing water. Before she was able to process anything more than that, the world moved around her as she levitated out of the water.

No, she was being lifted and carried out of the water-- by Starfire.

A concerned-sounding “Bring her here, Star…” from Robin was the first thing Raven could hear once her ears cleared.

Raven was aware of the world around her slowing and then moving up as she was, she guessed, set down on the sand. She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t feel anything.

That realization slowly dawned onto her and something akin to panic seeped into her being as her friends crowded around her, asking questions rapid-fire that she couldn’t gather the words to respond to. She was trying to speak, to tell Starfire she was ok, when the world around her started to fade away. The last thing she heard was Starfire’s panicked, tearful-sounding shouts as she lost consciousness.

“Raven! Raven!”

 Raven had no idea how much time had passed when she came to, but when she did, she found herself in what was most definitely a hospital bed. She frantically scanned the room and found Starfire slumped over in a chair in the corner, seemingly asleep. A quick sweep of the rest of the room found a large green husky asleep on the floor, and the silouettes of Robin and Cyborg standing behind a curtain.

“I can’t believe I let this happen,” sighed Robin. “I should have been watching more closely.”

“It was an accident, Rob… It’s nobody’s fault.”

Raven watched as the Robin silhouette shook its head, “I just can’t believe it…”

“You’re talking to someone who’s been through the same -well kind of- the same thing,” said Cyborg. “It’ll be tough at first, but eventually you adapt.”

Raven stared. _Adapt to what?_ Somewhere, the answer hovered around in her consciousness, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. She knew Cyborg had been in a bad accident and that was the reason for his current cybernetic makeup, and Cyborg had even used the word ‘accident’ to describe what had happened to her.

What had happened to her?

She tried to sit up, and found that she couldn’t. She tried to move a finger—nothing. Panic began to settle in as she realized she couldn’t move, or feel, and the more this reality sank in, the more helpless and terrified she felt.

The words bubbled up out of her throat, “What’s… wrong with me?” 

The two shadows behind the curtain turned and stared in Raven’s direction. Seconds later, the curtain was shoved aside and Cyborg and Robin approached her bedside with a strange look clouding the smiles on their faces that did nothing to soothe her unease.

“Hey Raven,” Robin said softly in the tone of voice he only used when talking to children or possibly to a teammate when something had gone wrong. “This must be startling… but…”

“What’s wrong with me?” Raven repeated, “What happened?”

Robin bit his lip and paused in his tracks. He looked down at the ground as if thinking of what to say.

Cyborg jumped in, pronouncing rather clinically, in measured tones, “You suffered a C-5 spinal fracture. You’re stable now, but….” He trailed off, leaving Raven to try and fill in the gaps but her scrambling mind wouldn’t cooperate.

“ _But?_ ” she prompted, frustration seeping into her tone.

Robin cleared his throat, “The doctors said you would be paralyzed – not completely, and you can obviously speak, which is great, but—”

“Paralyzed?” Raven’s voice broke as she repeated the word and she suddenly felt like all the air had been sucked out of her. This took on a quite literal turn as she instantly found herself gasping for breath.

“Take it easy, Raven!” Robin exclaimed, stepping forward. He turned to Cyborg just as Raven managed to regain a bit of the breath she had lost. “Cyborg, can you hook her back up to the ventilator?”

“I’m… fine…” Raven rasped, but internally she was anything but fine. She struggled for words and breath as she tried to process this information, and flashes of all the things she would no longer be able to do rolled through her mind alongside a strange kind of denial that forced her to preface each image with the internal mantra of _if that’s true_.

She sat still, staring at the foot of the bed. She had no reason to doubt that Cyborg and Robin were telling her the truth, but she felt like she had to hear it from someone else. She wheezed out Starfire’s name, scarcely realizing it had left her lips, then her eyes flew to her girlfriend.

Starfire was still hunched against the wall, snoring softly, chest rising and falling in what looked like a very uncomfortable position.

“She was up all night worrying about you,” Robin explained. “We finally convinced her to sleep about an hour ago.”

“Does… she know?”

“As much as there was at the time to know,” Robin sighed. “We were all here when the doctor gave us the prognosis.”

“I want to talk to her,” Raven said decidedly.

Robin silenced and both he and Cyborg fixed her with uneasy stares.

“Um… ok… we can do that,” Cyborg managed after a moment.

Robin looked down at the ground briefly, then moved over to where Starfire was, reached out, and gently shook her shoulder. Starfire stirred, eyes fluttering and finally opening. They scanned the room before lighting up when they landed on Raven.

“Girlfriend Raven! You are awake!” Starfire cried, levitating out of her seat and rushing over to Raven’s side. “Thank goodness! I was so worried you would not…”  
“Starfire,” Raven interrupted gravely, “I.. I can’t move.”

Starfire froze and churned through several facial expressions in the span of a second before curling in on herself slightly and pressing her fingers together. “Yes, we were all made aware of that possibility,” she said.

Raven stared. Starfire hadn’t been particularly despondent in her tone, though the expression on her face looked solemn.

The silence in the room was broken by a loud whimper and yawn as the husky that was Beast Boy removed itself from the floor and appeared over the edge of the bedframe. He quickly morphed back into his human form.

“Okay, someone else can have the floor now,” he groggily announced, throwing his hands out in front of him to do what looked like popping his back. He caught sight of Raven a second later, “Dude! You’re awake!” he exclaimed, cheerfully.

“Careful Beast Boy,” said Robin, protectively stepping in front of Raven’s bed and holding up a hand.

“Dude, I wasn’t going to do anything!” Beast Boy whined. His eyes flitted to Raven, and then returned to Robin. “So, how is she?”

Raven wanted to answer for herself but couldn’t find the strength, nor could she adequately summarize exactly how she was doing. So, she faded into silence as Robin answered in her stead.

“She does seem to be paralyzed,” Robin said in a measured tone. Raven watched Starfire’s expression carefully. “But she can speak.”

Beast Boy stared, slack-jawed, “Dude, for real?”

“Yes,” said Robin. “You were here when the doctor told us…”

“Yeah but,” Beast Boy’s reached up and scratched the back of his head, wincing, “I kind of thought he might have been pulling our leg…” he cleared his throat, “She’s really paralyzed?”

“Yes,” Robin patiently repeated.

A low, solemn, “Dude…” slipped from Beast Boy’s lips, barely audible even in the mostly quiet room. The other Titans all seemed to pause for a similar moment of recognition, only broken by Beast Boy’s sudden inquiry, “Can you still use your powers?”

Raven paused. She hadn’t thought about her powers. A glimmer of hope appeared alongside this revelation. If she could still use her powers, she might still be able to fight crime-- she might still be able to be a Titan.

“Let me try,” she managed. She didn’t wait for confirmation from the other Titans as to whether or not this was a good idea. She had to know. She took a short breath, bowed her head, focused, and whispered, “Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos….”

What happened next shattered the glimmer of hope she’d been feeling. Though she couldn’t feel her energy course through her body, she watched it shoot out of her and envelop the bed. She tried to redirect it, but something was wrong. Instead of obeying her command, her powers continued to envelop the hospital bed and lift it up off the floor. The other Titans seemed unsure of her intentions but she guessed her own facial expression must have given away that she wasn’t in control.

“Raven!” Starfire cried.

“Grab it!” Robin ordered.

In unison, the other four Titans lunged for the floating hospital bed. Raven was aware of four sets of hands gripping the bed rails and wrenching down on them.

“Raven! Relax!” Robin called.

Raven would have ordinarily explained how that was a misunderstanding of how her power worked, but under these circumstances her mind was racing and she couldn’t think of anything else to do to counteract what was happening. So, she took as deep a breath as she could manage and closed her eyes.

The bed returned to the ground with a gentle thud, and when Raven opened her eyes, the energy had dissipated.

The tears that ran down her face when she blinked, she could feel.

 

Raven couldn’t identify one specific emotion that described how she felt about the way things changed once she got back to Titans Tower. The Titans were more than accommodating of her new limits, but she found that little things they did to make her ‘fit in’ in her surroundings just irked her and made her feel like she stuck out more. Somewhere in the mix of the many feelings that swirled around inside her, a strange kind of defiance managed to pop out and become dominant for the week following her return home. She quietly vowed to herself that she would get better and not-so-quietly began to view the accommodations her friends made as irritating, and a show of their lack of confidence in her. When Cyborg removed the large couch from the living room and replaced it with two separate sofas so that Raven’s wheelchair could sit in the center, Raven asked him why he had done this – she would recover and have been able to sit on the old couch. When Beast Boy offered to cook her softer meals ‘in case you choke and stuff’ she told him not to bother. When Robin offered to ‘be her arms’ and help her organize her books, she refused.

She didn’t like feeling weak, she didn’t like the looks of pity that her friends tried to hide from her, and she really didn’t like the lack of control she felt over the situation. She clung to the idea that she would get that control back, and carried with her that sense of purpose until one day, she broke down.

She was sitting in her wheelchair in a corner of her room when Starfire came in, holding a plate of food and some chopsticks. Raven had asked to be wheeled to her room to be alone, but her friends didn’t seem to like the idea of leaving her alone. Starfire was her fourth visitor after Beast Boy had come in and tried to read her some of the books off her shelf, only to find that many of them were in a language he didn’t read, or had lots of words he struggled to pronounce. He quickly gave up and sulked on the end of her bed for about five minutes before racing off with some new idea that Raven didn’t care to listen to.

Starfire approached and sat down on the side of her bed, humming cheerfully.

“You must be hungry,” she said softly, with a slight sing-songy note in her voice.

“Not really,” Raven muttered.

“Oh but Raven you must eat…” protested Starfire. “You need your strength to recover.”

“Fine,” Raven sighed, “But you shouldn’t have to feed me.”

“What else would I do?” inquired Starfire, tilting her head to the side. “You cannot…”

“This is _temporary_ , Starfire,” Raven emphasized. “I’ll get better.”

Starfire bit her lip and paused with the chopsticks hovering over a piece of food. “But…”

“I’m going to get better, Starfire,” she insisted, and truthfully, she didn’t feel like she was going to be paralyzed for the rest of her life. The doctor had to have been wrong.

“I… understand…” Starfire said, nodding, expression locked in a sad smile. “But you will eat now, yes?”

“Sure Starfire,” Raven said.

Starfire daintily pinched the chopsticks and plucked a piece of food from the plate. She raised it, blew on it, and then inched it towards Raven’s mouth.

Just then, the door opened and Beast Boy rushed in, excited and carrying a stack of… something.

“Dude! I figured it out!” he exclaimed. Raven winced. “I can read you my comic books!”

Raven’s wince nearly turned into a scowl.

The next week, Raven reluctantly allowed Cyborg to convert her wheelchair into one with a sip-and-puff control mechanism. This came in light of the realization of how long it had been since the accident, contrasted with the knowledge that she still wasn’t able to move her hands. She hadn’t quite given up on recovery, but she had given up on trying to recover by herself.

Raven orbited her room in a circle, practicing control with the sip and puff straw. Every so often, she would pass by the rows of spellbooks on her shelf and briefly entertain the thought of attempting to cure herself of the paralysis with magic. 

The more times she circled the room, the more she realized how complex it would be to do much of anything else, and the more she entertained the notion of healing herself using her powers…. Or a spell. She didn’t herself know a spell that would cure her paralysis, but someone else might.

She thought about Azar. If anyone would know what to do about her particular… situation… it would be Azar.

But Azar was gone.

She eyed the chest in the corner of her room, remembering the long nights she had spent learning spells under Malchior’s tutelage. She blew into the straw, twisted it slightly, and inched towards the chest, then at once caught herself and removed her mouth from the device. She bit her lip.

_It wasn’t worth that._

As Raven developed slightly more skill with the chair controls and a few gadgets of Cyborg’s design that were added into her routine, she became irritable again. She found herself able to do more things, but as she ran up against her limits again and again, she often couldn’t hold back the feelings of anger and frustration this brought to the surface. She knew it to be irrational, but she felt like this almost had to be someone’s _fault_ , and some part of her looked for any opportunity to pin the blame on someone who seemed even remotely culpable. She spent some time wanting to blame the doctor who diagnosed her, Beast Boy for sending the volleyball towards the water, Robin for suggesting the game, and then herself for being careless enough to get hurt.

Try as she might to keep these feelings from disrupting her interactions with her friends, she found herself snapping at them more than she would have liked. Beast Boy was the most frequent target, as he’d always had unfortunate timing, but it got to the point where he took to avoiding her altogether. Starfire, who did most of the work of caring for Raven, would have been the second most-frequent target of Raven’s bileful commentary, but a heightened awareness that she didn’t want to hurt her partner allowed Raven to strain against her impulses there.

“Girlfriend Raven,” Starfire said softly one day, leaning over Raven as she bathed her with a washcloth. “You should really be nicer to the others… They are only trying to help.”

Raven said nothing. She kept staring straight ahead with a frown on her face, hearing the water trickle from the washcloth as it lapped against her skin. “I know it must be very hard to cope with what has happened, but…”

“Of _course_ it’s hard, Star…” Raven growled without meaning to, “and no one else understands…”

“Even if we do not understand, I wish for you to understand that we are trying, and that we only wish to help…”

Raven paused.

“I know, Starfire,” she sighed. Then, frustrated, she began to shout, truthfully at no one in particular, “I just… look at me! I have no control over my powers! I can’t _do anything_ alone!” Hot, angry tears brimmed in her eyes as she spoke, “What am I supposed to do?”

A lack of water sounds told Raven that Starfire had stopped washing, and a moment later Starfire’s voice arrived in her ear, “You do not have to do anything, Raven. You need only to live as yourself. We are your friends and we will be your friends no matter what.”

Raven’s breath hitched, “But…”

“No matter what,” Starfire repeated, then gently kissed Raven on the temple – a gesture that splintered Raven’s last bit of resolve. She soon found herself with her face pressed into Starfire’s shoulder, feeling her girlfriend gently stroking her hair as she let fresh tears of frustration fall.

The next week was cloudy and the dismal weather outside matched Raven’s mood. She was no longer frustrated or angry, just resigned. Progress in learning to cope with her disability slowed to a halt as she found just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. She didn’t find this abnormal until one day when Beast Boy, who had finally started to come around her again, seemed to take a special interest in getting her attention. First, he offered to make her some herbal tea, then asked her what movie she’d like to watch, then offered to put on some of her music on the stereo. Raven didn’t pay much attention to the answers she gave to each, and supposed Beast Boy would have preferred to do his usual gaming, streaming and watching of slapstick comedy, but something was different…

“Starfire she’s weirding me out,” Beast Boy finally said and it dawned on Raven that he’d been sitting crossways to her on the carpet, staring at her, for some time. “She won’t do anything.”

Starfire’s voice drifted over to Raven from somewhere nearby. “Girlfriend Raven is… coping with a great deal of sadness.”

“I’m not sad…” Raven said, and Beast Boy did a double-take, leading her to think maybe she hadn’t spoken to him before at all. “I’m just tired.”

“Learning to use all that new stuff is a lot of work, huh?” Beast Boy quipped, leaning into her field of vision. “But I bet you get it mastered in no time.”

“Lovely…” Raven drawled. She sighed and looked out at the cloudy sky, wishing her body would melt into it.

“You’re gonna be ok, okay?” Beast Boy’s unusually serious-toned comment broke through her thoughts. “You’re still one of us, still a hero… unless you don’t wanna be, and then you can be something else!”

It wasn’t a spectacularly profound statement, but Raven had to admit it was well-above Beast Boy’s usual.

“Beast Boy is correct, Girlfriend Raven…” Starfire echoed, “You are a hero. You are also you. You are loved by your friends and you are a wonderful person.”

Raven sat for a moment and let the words sink in. She didn’t quite feel like smiling but she did feel a little spark of warmth inside.

“Thank you,” she said, “and… I’m sorry for some of the things I’ve said to you all since…” she trailed off.

“Eh, it’s fine…” said Beast Boy, but Raven could hear in his voice that he appreciated the apology, “Knew you needed your space, that’s all.”

“Apology accepted, Raven,” Starfire said.

For the weeks that followed, Raven made baby steps that grew into leaps and bounds in learning to control her wheelchair. As she showed more interest in the gadgets Cyborg had made for her to help her do other various things, he returned it with a great enthusiasm and started inventing more. One pivotal point in all this was the reveal of a device he’d rigged up similar to what controlled her chair, but this one would allow her to interface with the Titans’ mainframe. Raven developed what could almost be called an obsession with mastering that particular control, as it allowed her access to a vast amount of information she was grateful to have after being restricted from it previously.

Alternating training with Robin and Starfire, Raven was able to regain control over some of her abilities. Her telekinetic powers, generally speaking, she still couldn’t quite use, but her healing powers she found she could still master. She felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment at being able to heal the other Titans after they came home from battles and missions, though she felt bad initially for not being there to defend them and stop them from getting hurt in the first place.

The more time she spent interacting with the Titans mainframe, the more she found she was able to do with it. What had started out as her just trying to get digital copies of books to read, quickly turned into her digesting entire databases of written information because she could. This data included weak points on various types of armor, abandoned sites in the city, and developments in a type of scanner she’d had connected up to let her listen in on things around town. She could then recite this information over the mic into the other Titans’ earpieces, telling Robin where to strike a blow with his bo-staff, or where Plasmus had been sighted, or what a particular device that had been stolen would do. She could quickly draw connections between the information she’d absorbed and what her teammates were observing, and in a couple of cases, prevented them from walking into traps. Raven found herself enjoying what became a new line of work much more than she’d thought she might, and glowed inside when Robin told her she was “indispensable” to the team.

As the weeks drew into years, Raven gradually was able to develop and cultivate an understanding of her disability, but mostly she was happy to be living her life with her friends, her girlfriend, who eventually became her wife, and her new sense of purpose.

 


End file.
